Now and again I worked there as a casual labourer unloading cinnamon, teak and cork oak. By 1994, however, when Bengt Tengroth asked me if I could decorate two large jetty poles on the quayside at Norra Älvstranden, the docks had long since ceased to provide a meeting place with foreign countries.

My underlying idea in carving the North and South winds was to resurrect the seafarer’s art – figureheads, tattoos, cigar labels.

I submitted one proposal (North wind, version 1) in peartree wood.
The material I subsequently carved in was pressure-impregnated pine, – a dead material to work in. 

I was eager to retain the character of the actual pole, so the final result was very different from the sketch.
For the money I received from this commission, I was able to buy the first of four logs that later became the suite “Tête I–IV”. It was these logs that led me to discover the significance of the concave form – creating a shape by the reductive process of carving it into a log.

The following year I was asked if I could consider sculpting two more poles – and so the East and West winds were also born.

It was fortuitous that I had already started work on “Tête I–IV”, for these are now distinguished from their predecessors by having concave faces.